


Behind Closed Doors

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Imagined Character Death, Imagined Partner Betrayal, Imagined Violence, M/M, Qun-Loyal Iron Bull, Tal-Vashoth Iron Bull, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4857362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[TRESPASSER SPOILERS]</p><p> </p><p>In another reality, the Iron Bull was loyal to the Qun. It's not until a dead Qunari is found in the Winter Palace that he really lets himself think about what that would have meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind Closed Doors

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is about a positive outcome for Dorian and Bull's relationship, but features Bull worrying about ways it could have gone to hell. The Bad End fic that wasn't really Bad End.

The first hint the Bull had that something was wrong was Red, all in white, coming to find him with soft quick steps. Divine Victoria was meant to glide around with dignity, and she was testing the limits of that now. 

He looked up.

"The Iron Bull," she said serenely, a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth, oh, she was practiced. "Walk with me."

Heaving himself to his feet, he nodded. Every eye in the tavern followed them. The Divine and a Tal-Vashoth mercenary. The start of five thousand filthy jokes.

"You know," Red said, still smiling, "it's so good to talk with you. I never have to remind you to watch your expression. Our dear Inquisitor is a fine woman, and yet—well."

Jana Cadash never was one to win at Wicked Grace.

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Right. And the thing you're about to tell me that's going to make that important is—?"

"It's something I want to show you, in fact," Red said. "I would very much like your input. You are—the resident expert, in a way. Here."

They stepped together through the doorway she had indicated, and there on the floor was—

"Antaam?" Red asked. She wasn't smiling now. She watched him intently, kept her distance. Just as well, with those pristine hems of hers. Too much damn blood.

The Bull dropped to a crouch, examined the patterning of the vitaar across the man's face and chest, the markings on his pauldrons. 

"Ah, crap," he said, because there wasn't anything much else to say. Red knew. She only wanted confirmation.

Behind him, Red sighed. "I rather thought you might say that."

 

 

Some new problems, then:

A dead Qunari soldier in the Winter Palace;

A dead Qunari soldier's murderer, presumably also in the Winter Palace;

The fact that The Iron Bull had no leads on either of the previous two points.

 

 

Dorian slipped back into the Bull's room in the early afternoon, stood looking worn and uncertain. The sunlight cast shadows across his throat. His shoulders were tense. Dark circles under his eyes. They'd been there since he heard his own news. Congratulations, Magister Pavus. 

An argument to be taken up again later. 

He looked over the Bull, sitting on the floor; looked over the Bull's armour spread out on a rug before the bed, his axe leaning against the windowsill. A raised eyebrow. 

"I don't suppose you have any idea why Jana is climbing the trellises?" he asked. "I rather thought she would have tired of that sort of thing after our last sojourn here. And besides, I had some idea that she was stuck in that tedious council meeting."

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Should think that'd have something to do with the dead Qunari Red's people found."

And Dorian—froze, wide-eyed, lips slightly parted. "I beg your pardon?"

The Bull shrugged.

"Amatus—"

"We'll see what Jana finds out," the Bull said. "Hey, Kadan, why don't you come here for a bit?"

Dorian came to him. "A little early for that sort of thing, isn't it?"

"Nah," the Bull said. "It's never a bad time to fuck you."

Dorian laughed, only slightly tired, only slightly shaken. Climbed down into the Bull's lap and drew him into a tender, lingering kiss.

"You are quite the most filthy-minded creature, you know," he said softly, and drew gentle fingers over the Bull's cheek.

"That's why you love me," the Bull said, and Dorian offered no protest; only sighed, and kissed him again.

 

 

I like knowing things, he told Jana and Krem. 

It itched at him, crawled under his skin. This lack of control. Fragments:

A dead body;

Magic mirrors;

Lyrium mining;

Gaatlok;

The Viddasala.

None of it became a coherent picture. He couldn't _see._ And yeah, he had the thought: what if I was still Ben-Hassrath? What if I knew where the shit this was going?

The problem with that thought:

He could take a reasonable guess as to the answer. Oh, not what the Qunari had planned. But one piece of it, one small fragment, just big enough to contain Hissrad. 

Would Jana have made that call, the other one? If she was desperate enough, maybe. If she was pushed too far, if one of those early near misses the Inquisition had experienced had gone a little bit worse.

 

 

Hissrad grieved. He was not meant to indulge in the feeling for so long, perhaps, but he was still far from the Qun, even as he gave himself over to it. He could allow himself one last moment for the men he had lost. 

For Krem, if he was going to be honest with himself.

This, too, he allowed: Dorian in his bed. They had been fucking for some months already when the Chargers died; best to keep on looking like The Iron Bull, surely. No dramatic shifts that would make people look at him and really feel the truth of his loyalty to the Qun, not more than they already did. No obvious severing of his remaining ties. 

Yes, that was probably how it would have gone. In anger, in grief, in certainty that the Qun was the only truth that he could ever know—yes, he could have done it. Excused it as part of a cover story and told himself that he was not fond of Dorian; that if he was fond of Dorian, it could not matter.

And then—oh, yes, what then?

 

 

Dorian lay across the Bull's chest, warm and heavy, bare skin a little sticky with sweat. The Bull dragged his palms up Dorian's sides, back down to linger on his hips. Dorian's hair tickled against his collarbone.

"Are you certain," Dorian said, "that you're quite alright? Not that I'm objecting, but you've been rather emphatic about bedding me, even by your standards. I was wondering if perhaps—"

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Yeah, I'm good. Got lost time to make up for, that's all."

An observation: a truth is rarely the only truth.

But it _was_ a truth, and Dorian seemed to accept it, relaxed into it. "You're going to quite wear me out, you know. I'm afraid I must be getting old."

"Hmm," the Bull said, and slid his arms around Dorian, embraced him, held him close and safe. "If it comes to that, how're you doing?"

"I—" Dorian sighed. "I hardly feel I can keep up with everything just now, to be frank. I suppose it's as well that I not be left with too much time to consider—that is—"

There it was again: the shadow of an argument they'd only taken a break from.

"I know," the Bull said.

"I missed you a great deal," Dorian said, very quiet.

"Hey," the Bull said. "We're both here, Kadan. Just us and an assassination plot and some creepy-ass magic. Like old times."

He won a laugh, though it faded into a sigh.

"I love you quite terribly much, you know," Dorian murmured. "Even if you are entirely infuriating and won't tell me how you're feeling."

 

 

Say it happened like this, then:

Hissrad received his orders via a dead drop—say in Lydes, as the Inquisition's delegation traveled down to Halamshiral by a roundabout sort of route, in order not to make the Council of Heralds believe they could be hurried. He read the instructions, and memorised them, and burnt the papers. He had done so a great many times before.

For a moment, it hurt, in the way that change generally does. But there was a satisfaction to it, too. A very improper desire for revenge, turned to a proper end.

Hissrad passed the Viddathari agents schedules when he could. He distracted Red's people at the appropriate moments. Probably they got caught out anyway, but maybe they didn't.

He fucked Dorian for old times' sake, and imagined that some other version of himself would find it difficult to leave this comfort behind; considered whether it might be proper to spare Dorian certain kinds of suffering. He would not survive the coming invasion. He hadn't the disposition for life under the Qun. It would be so very easy; Dorian trusted him beyond reason.

A hand around the throat. Dorian did very much like to be choked. How he had flushed, admitting it. That had been before the Storm Coast, even.

Only squeeze a little harder, hold a little longer—

Dorian arched under Hissrad, struggled against his grip. Fought for breath. How it must burn in his lungs. Then the moment when it shifted, when Dorian realised it was too much, too far, the frantic tap of his fingers against Hissrad's arm. Hissrad only closed his hand tighter, cut off the flow of blood and held on until the last of The Iron Bull was dead.

 

 

Unrealistic. He had only thought it because sex was an immediate presence, the smell of it heavy in the room: clinging to Dorian's skin, to the sheets. That way was too careless, too much chance of raising suspicions. Perhaps if Jana had already fallen, if there was nobody left to see: only Dorian, unaware; only Hissrad, unable to deal with the truth of his affections, taking a coward's route and calling it mercy.

A deep unease twisted his stomach.

Beside him, Dorian breathed evenly in sleep. A hand against the Bull's thigh, his skin warm and soft. His mustache was a mess. No wonder; he'd had his lips stretched around the Bull's cock not two hours earlier, gorgeous and eager.

The Bull touched Dorian's bare throat very carefully, traced the bruises on the side of his neck—the ones the Bull himself had put there early that morning, overwhelmed with relief at the physical reality of Dorian in his rooms. In his arms. There had been no dead Qunari then, and the death of Halward Pavus had not lain between them either. 

Dorian didn't wake, only shifted, turned his face against the pillow with a faint sigh.

The Bull thought: 

Trust. Of course it was trust. It had been trust before it was love. 

It had been trust before he was Tal-Vashoth.

 

 

Like this, then:

"I want to talk about my feelings, Dorian," Hissrad said. A little strategy, a little respect. 

It was true that he _felt_. True, too, that it could not matter except as a tool. A truth was the best sort of lie, wasn't it? Dorian believed it. Dorian wasn't hard to lie to. He wanted, so very much, to believe.

They lay together, a frantic sort of reunion. They fought together just as they always had, until the correct moment came. Dorian's joy in it, his pleasure at being by the Bull's side—as good an end of days as any, surely.

A signal—unimportant what kind. In battle, say. Antaam before them, and Hissrad, who had always had the Herald's back, took a dagger from his belt and sunk it between her ribs.

"You," Dorian said. His hands shook. A moment's hesitation, the unwillingness to believe the scene in front of him, all open hurt.

I am at peace, Hissrad thought. 

I am, Hissrad thought.

"Yeah," he said, and broke Dorian's neck cleanly, and didn't feel very much of anything.

 

 

No.

 

 

"You," Dorian said, and the hurt was written clearly across his face. A crushing betrayal. But he was strong, so damn strong, always; his hands tight on his staff, his stance off balance, but energy gathered around him. Hissrad, who had grown used to mages, felt acutely the danger they posed. Felt it in the oppressive thunderstorm feeling of Dorian's gathering power. An unstoppable build.

Well, Hissrad thought. I guess that's about all I needed to do. Ataash Qunari.

He felt very tired. He'd never been that good at following the Qun. He'd believed, oh, he'd believed, with all the ferocity of self-doubt. And here: he'd carried out his orders.

Hey, Tama, did I do well?

When Dorian's fire tore through him, it didn't hurt in any way that could possibly signify.

 

 

The Bull heaved himself from the bed, cursed under his breath; walked to the window and threw it open, breathed in the cool night air as though it could shock him out of his own thoughts. 

The moonlight was bright, and it sharpened the outlines of the hedges and statues of the gardens, cast deep shadows, gleamed on metal. Guards at the gates. The rest was still. A dead hour of the morning.

Behind him, Dorian stirred. 

"Go back to sleep," the Bull said. "I'll be right with you."

A muffled yawn, the shifting of sheets. "Are you well?"

Dorian's footsteps were quiet on the thick rug. His hand against the Bull's hip was very warm. Standing by the window, he shivered a little. Forever delicate, but only in the ways that weren't too important.

He made a habit of not lying to Dorian, which complicated things. "I'll be fine."

"Hmm," Dorian said, and leant in against the Bull's side. "That was not, I note, a yes."

The Bull thought: I don't want to tell him.

He thought: I want him to know.

He was far beyond the limits of any map he'd ever had.

Wouldn't it be a conversation and a half. I'm feeling out of sorts because I could easily have become the kind of person who'd go ahead and murder you with no qualms. Who could die at your hand and feel at peace.

I'm feeling out of sorts because I believe, for the first time, that staying true to the Qun would have destroyed more of me than becoming Tal-Vashoth ever has.

Weird, to find the beginning of certainty here, years after the fact.

You ever think about what would happen if the Qunari invaded the South, Jana had asked him once, early days, when she'd still seemed more angry than inclined to evil humour. As soon as she'd asked, he'd known how it would be. But he hadn't been lying when he said he didn't think about it.

He knew it, but he put it away. He should put this away now.

Dorian drew him from the window with patient, careful hands. Held him; nothing to do with sex for once, although they were naked—pressed close together, Dorian's cock soft against his thigh.

It could become something to do with sex. Something to focus his full being on.

The Bull sighed, turned it to an interested little rumble. Drew Dorian up in his arms for a slow kiss. "Just overthinking the Qunari shit," he said, because it was, in its way, a truth. A low laugh. "You could give me something else to think about."

"Yes," Dorian said. "I suppose I could."

A little more space. The Bull needed—he needed Dorian. They'd been long enough apart, and now—

Dorian's hands touching his sides. He always loved the softness of the Bull's body, as much as he loved the Bull's muscles. The Bull had got a pretty great body, why wouldn't he? But there was something about the look he got sometimes, touching the Bull—oh, yeah. Good. That was a distracting thought. 

Dorian shifted against him, idle movements of his hips. A kiss to the Bull's shoulder, down onto his chest. "Perhaps the bed," he suggested. "For all that I do enjoy a little adventure—"

Here: the Bull on his back on the wrinkled sheets. Dorian knelt above him, one of the Bull's thick thighs between his legs, his cock slowly beginning to fill. That was good. The feeling of Dorian's nails digging into his hips was good too. 

The Bull let his head fall back against the pile of pillows they'd accumulated, closed his eye. Breathed in the scent of Dorian.

"Are you with me?" Dorian murmured, leant in for a kiss. The full-length drag of his body against the Bull's as he shifted to manage it sparked through the Bull. A bit disconnected, a bit distant, but definitely interest all the same.

"I'm with you," the Bull said, and went to scratch at the short hair on the back of Dorian's head, rest a heavy hand on his neck, hold him in the kiss. 

But he had thought twice of killing Dorian. A quick twist or an unrelenting pressure. Couldn't he have thought of something less intimate? An axe-blow.

If he didn't flinch physically from the thought it was only because his training hadn't completely abandoned him.

He let his hand fall to the bed above his head instead, like he was stretching. Flexed his fingers against nothing as Dorian shifted a thigh deliberately against his balls. Groaned.

"More," he said. "Come on, give me more than that."

 

 

An axe-blow. What's the most limbs you've ever cut off something in one swing? Down on the collar-bone and through, right?

When we fight, you make them not people.

All that rot you said about hacking people. You do like it?

Blackwall, Rainier, was dead. Sera was dismissed. A liability. The Herald's position too precarious, she said.

Who was it who said that thing about making them not people, though? Maybe it was only a thought he had once. It was true enough. An old strategy.

It didn't matter any more. Hissrad couldn't make Dorian not be a person, not after years of intimate familiarity. Nor the Herald, for all he might like to. But it didn't _matter_.

He left them in the early hours, kissed Dorian's forehead as a last concession to his long, treasured pretense; let him sleep, and stole away through an Eluvian. Between worlds he met his new companions, the Viddasala's gang of Ben-Hassrath agents. Talked over their plans.

When he met the Inquisition again, he made himself empty; made himself a weapon. They were people and he lacked the capacity to mind.

It balanced out. 

Dorian bled like any other Tevinter mage, angles all wrong, spread on the ground.

 

 

"Bull," Dorian said, with a very forced evenness. The Bull opened his eye. A ridiculous gilded ceiling, flickering candlelight. Dorian's worried face, a hint of a frown creasing his forehead. "What _is_ going on?"

"Uh," the Bull said. His pulse was slowly settling back to some sort of normal. He couldn't get rid of the images in his head.

"You went away somewhere in your head," Dorian said. "And you're hardly touching me. You suggest sex, and then—this."

No anger. Concerned curiosity, a considering tone as though he was trying to put the thing together in his own mind. 

"Amatus," Dorian said, "I'm going to ask you again, because distracting you clearly isn't working: are you quite well?"

"Ah, you know," the Bull said. "It's—ugh. Qunari shit, like I said."

Dorian hummed in agreement, stretched himself out along the Bull's side, an arm draped over his stomach. "It may shock you to learn that I had some idea that might be the case, yes."

"Yeah," the Bull said uneasily. "Maybe not like you're thinking."

"Something to do with us, then," Dorian said. 

"This a question game?"

Dorian sighed, but stayed pressed against the Bull's side. "If it must be. You could, of course, just tell me."

"I don't know if this operation they're running is legit," the Bull said, sighed. "Maybe it's some faction shit, maybe the Viddasala's gone off script like the old Arishok did in Kirkwall. I don't know. But if it is—ah, crap. I just keep thinking about the Storm Coast. Jana hesitated, you know. Thought for a moment—turns out her priorities aren't like that. But if they were—"

He drew a deep breath. Dorian shifted, pushed himself up on an elbow to see the Bull's face better. That little frown again.

"You never wanted to be Tal-Vashoth," Dorian said slowly. "You would have accepted it."

There it was. Not a good thought; not a thought that said much positive about his sense of priorities. Yeah, the choice had been all down to Jana then. In that moment, she was his authority, not the Qun. She'd told him who he was, and she'd been his authority since. But otherwise—

"It would've fucked me up," the Bull said. "Didn't really think so. You know how it was. I was scared shitless of losing it. But it _would_ have. Being a spy for the long haul, waiting it out until the right damn moment."

Words failed him short of the punch: I would probably have kept sleeping with you. 

I would definitely have betrayed you.

"Oh, Bull," Dorian said, despite this silence. Slid a hand up over his chest, stroked his forehead. The Bull gave up on the last of his reserve and leant openly into the touch.

"I'd betray the inquisition," he said. "No question. Wouldn't doubt my choice for a moment."

And there it was: the moment when Dorian managed to read between the lines. His arm tensed for a moment. To relax it again must have been an act of will. His frown had deepened.

"Ah," Dorian said.

So Dorian knew. To say it plainly was only for the Bull's own benefit. But he found he needed to.

"I'd betray you," he said.

There.

Dorian's hand came to rest above the Bull's heart, a gentle pressure. What the gesture meant, the Bull wasn't sure.

"How long have you been thinking about this, amatus?" Dorian asked.

His voice was so measured that the Bull fought the urge to laugh. Dorian was prone to inappropriate laughter, all sharp-edged with pain; the Bull didn't go for that. But he understood it better suddenly.

"That's all you have to say?"

"It's all I have to say," Dorian said. "How long?"

"Ever since Red showed me the body," the Bull admitted. Slumped, tension going out of him all at once, a weird boneless feeling of emotional exhaustion. "Got to thinking—you know, all the spy shit. Felt like finally seeing why the Ben-Hassrath really wanted me in the Inquisition in the first place. I never asked."

"You just had orders," Dorian said. Still that steadiness. Still that gentle pressure. "I understand, I suppose."

Dorian, the Bull thought, had probably never followed an explicit instruction without questioning it in his life. But he knew a few things about other kinds of assumptions. They'd had those talks.

"Yeah," the Bull said.

They breathed together. Dorian stayed leaning over him, studying his face carefully.

"It's not real," Dorian said finally. "I don't know what you expect. That I would be angry at you for the possible actions of a person you will never be? Do you think I haven't had demons show me terrible things that I could have done? I am, after all, quite powerful. Demons do so like that."

The Bull managed to huff a laugh. Not wild and hurt, only a subdued amusement. "That shouldn't be comforting."

"And yet we take our comfort where we can," Dorian said, and smiled. "A little solidarity, at least." 

He patted the Bull's chest. An absurd gesture. 

"Do you think you can sleep?"

The Bull considered. Sick images of death still teased at him. The curse of an efficient imagination. "No."

"Very well," Dorian said. "In that case, if you've a mind to share a drink with me, I do happen to have a very fine bottle of whisky that I was planning to save for the pleasure of seeing Sera make faces at it once all this is over. What do you say? Shall we attempt to save the ungrateful South while slightly hungover and distinctly underslept?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," the Bull conceded, and Dorian laughed, and went to dig through his pack. 

The Bull's side felt cold without him against it. But he was only gone for a moment.

"Here," Dorian said, settling cross-legged on the bed, beckoning to the Bull to join him. "To ill-considered nights of drinking. I haven't any glasses, but I suppose we can drink from the bottle like the degenerates we are."

"I hear they kick you out of the Magisterium for that kind of shit," the Bull said, and Dorian laughed again. 

"No, no, now you're thinking of Orlais. The guards are on their way to escort us from the premises as we speak."

Dorian raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed, smirked against the glass at the obvious attention the Bull was playing to the line of his throat.

 

 

They had been kissing lazily, wound together, without any aim beyond the thing itself. The Bull must have drifted, finally; he opened his eye to morning sun. 

It was still early. The servants were up and about, of course, crossing the gardens, talking under the window, but the full performance of the Game didn't seem to be underway yet. 

He rolled over, lifting his head awkwardly to get his horns out of the way. Stretched, and came up against the warm skin of Dorian's legs; looked up to see that Dorian was smiling down at him in some amusement over the edge of a book.

"Good reading?" he asked.

"One of Varric's," Dorian said, "so absolutely not. But how can I properly annoy him if I haven't read it? Some sacrifices are necessary."

"Hmm," the Bull said, and gave himself over to a moment of contemplation of his hangover, which wasn't in fact on anything like the scale he probably deserved. 

"Jana was by," Dorian said. "I didn't want to wake you. But we've some more investigation to do in a few hours. We're both going along, and Cassandra too. Frankly, I suspect she volunteered just to escape the Council."

He'd been out properly, then. 

Good.

"Come on, then," he said, and dragged the sheets from Dorian's lap. "Food."

"You are entirely awful," Dorian said, and bent to kiss him.

 

 

Down to the tavern for breakfast, where Sera was merciless in bothering Dorian. A transparent effort to cover the fact she didn't want him to go; the Bull didn't grudge her any of it. He felt pretty intensely on that point himself. But that was for later.

One thing at a time.

He ate from Dorian's plate, sat close beside him, and took turns with Sera trying to get Dorian to groan.

"You've got an unfair advantage though, right?" Sera said, leered, and won herself a point for that alone. 

"Not terribly creative," Dorian said, as airly as he could with definitely pink cheeks. "Do try harder."

"Is that what you say to him?" Sera asked. Laughed at her own joke.

"I'm _very_ creative," the Bull said.

"Yes, dear," Dorian said with mock weariness. And it was good. Normal. The old normal, more or less. Inquisition normal, but better, because Dorian was relaxed.

The Bull's uneasiness hadn't completely left him. But it felt better to have named his fears, as little sense as that made to him. To have Dorian's response be nothing but sympathy and alcohol. 

Dorian's hand rested on his knee under the table.

 

 

The Viddasala, then.

In the background, the roar of a dragon. Pain and fury. 

"Hissrad!" the Viddasala cried. "Now, please!"

 

 

"Understood, ma'am," Hissrad said, and hefted his axe, watched the moment when the Inquisitor realised. When Dorian realised.

 

 

And it would never happen. Dorian had told him. He felt the truth of it now, a growing certainty that finally became fully formed.

"Not a chance, ma'am," the Iron Bull said, and felt the weight of Dorian's gaze on him in the moment before the chaos of battle took over. Felt sure that Dorian was smiling.

 

 

A moment's reprieve, the door barred while they checked equipment, tended to minor wounds.

"Are you alright?" Dorian asked, a touch to the Bull's elbow, a raised eyebrow, and the Bull gave the question the serious thought it deserved, and found:

He was. Truly, finally at peace away from the Qun. He'd been tested. And he knew who he was. He knew where he wanted to be.

The rest was details. Details would come.

"Never better, Kadan," he said, and Dorian's expression only stayed searching for a moment before it gave way to a genuine smile, brilliant, eyes and all. 

"I'm glad to hear it," he said. "Amatus."

Their hands brushed. One of Dorian's fingers curled around his for a moment.

Jana was looking strained most of the time these days. The mark, the politics, the damn Qunari invasion plan. But she managed a kind of indulgence, just for them. "You're quite done?"

"Oh," Dorian said, "not at all. But I suppose we do have some sort of business to attend to. Something about a dragon, was it?"

" _Shit_ yeah," the Bull said.

"Glad you could join us," Jana said drily. "Let's get this over with."


End file.
